


A Fire at the Pit of my Heart

by unicornsandbutane



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 05:26:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8274497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornsandbutane/pseuds/unicornsandbutane
Summary: Hux watches Starkiller burn.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Huxloween prompt: Bonfire

They’d taken Ren’s shuttle, because it was the fastest. And they’d needed it, that speed, as they shot off the surface of Starkiller Base, and watched it crumble behind them. A pilot whose name Hux did not know anticipated the shockwave of the planet’s collapse, rode it ever closer to the Finalizer, provided updates as to estimated time of arrival. Hux gave no answer. His gaze was fixed, stone-faced and silent, on the total failure of his life’s great work. Soon, it would be nothing but a void in space, just as the Hosnian system was. He took a deep breath, and refused to blink.

He would not miss a second of this. Ren, convalescent in the back of the shuttle, would see none of it. He would never know the latest disaster he’d wrought. Hux, so closely following his finest hour, would be of no more use to the Order, except as errand boy, ferrying Ren, that miserable creature, to see his master. Ren would be forgiven. Ren was too special for something so base as blame. But Hux, in the grander scheme, was expendable. His plans had failed and he expected ultimate retribution. Until then, however, he would keep his eyes on the last vestiges of Starkiller, his brainchild, his legacy, and watch it die.

There had been over four and a half million souls on Starkiller Base. How many of his Command had managed to get to the shuttles? What of Phasma? Mitaka? Thanisson? Unamo? What of the thousands of troops, trained in his father’s academy? He could only assume most were gone, swallowed up by the burning heart of the dying planet’s core.

Against the emptiness of space, Starkiller was an unstable, burning orb. It was a funeral pyre. It was his body burned in effigy.

Slowly, his left hand curled into a fist. With creaking joints he raised it, with effort, to his chest. The knot of his fist laid over his heart, a salute to all that had been lost this day.

He was reflected in the transparisteel, and he appraised himself, everything he’d built himself to be. He could still see Starkiller through the ghostly image of himself, receding into the distance. In his reflection, it sat just at the centre of his forehead, like an assassin’s mark.

He watched it burn. He watched it until it winked out of existence. Only then did he turn away.


End file.
